Population and forensic analysis of 9 non-CODIS markers in Slovak population

Genetic analyses of STR markers provide data for several important applications, including criminal caseworks, kinship analyses and population studies. In this study, we describe the parameters of nine STR markers (D2S1360, D3S1744, D4S2366, D5S2500, D6S474, D7S1517, D8S1132, D10S2325, D21S2055) in Slovak population and compare them with several European and worldwide populations. Since these markers are not commonly used in forensic practice, our data might provide subsidiary discriminatory power in the most demanding criminal examinations, where additional markers need to be analyzed. Moreover, we performed the MDS analysis and constructed a phylogenetic tree representing genetic relationships between several European populations based on Nei's D_A distance. We show that the analysis of just 9 markers is sufficient for reliable clustering of different European populations and their separation from the populations from other geographical areas. Taken together, our data provide a reliable dataset characterizing the Slovak population, which might serve as a basis for criminal, population and kinship studies.